The SUNY system is launching its first major in Indigenous Studies, and it’s happening right here in our backyard at the University at Buffalo. How the department’s chair believes the bachelor’s degree will educate Indigenous issues globally, and continue to uplift Haudenosaunee culture and language in a higher-ed setting
Indigenous studies at UB has a long and storied history. It was originally started in 1972 as the Native American Studies Program – within the former Department of American Studies. That era was one of great activism and change for the Haudenosaunee and Native people across the continent with the American Indian Movement at its height. And the program brought in major players of that time like Oren Lyons, John Mohawk, Barry White, and Marilyn Schindler to name a few.
Now not only is Indigenous Studies its own department, but it’s celebrating another milestone, a bachelor’s degree. Department chair Mishuana Goeman said for students involved, it’s not just a Native history degree.
“Our history is the future. Basically all of our lands are built around these past kind of relationships," said Goeman. "But what we’re talking about is how that past is carried into the future.”
One way Goeman said the department is trying to accomplish this, is stressing the importance of an Indigenous-centered undergraduate education for those pursuing careers that might find themselves working on a reservation or with the Native community in some other way.
“We have a couple of our courses listed with UB Law. The foundation of property law for instance, is based on federal Indian law," she explained. "We have the Indian Health Service – they offer a lot of fellowships for medical school. Urban Planning. So having that basis of understanding the history, the political governance systems of Indigenous communities is really important.”
At one point – Haudenosaunee language consisted of a family of 16 distinct languages. Many have become extinct, and those that remain have a dangerously low number of fluent speakers. The most prevalent is Mohawk, with 3,000 people according to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council. For Seneca, UNESCO estimates that number to be under 100. Language is vital for a number of reasons, like to continue many traditional ceremonies.
“Language revitalization is incredibly important. We hope to hire an adjunct faculty for Seneca, we’ve already gotten approval for that," Goeman said on the progress of the department's language courses. "We also have people who are working with Mohawk and Tuscarora. What’s interesting though is that it’s very difficult, because language knowledge comes from the community. It doesn’t necessarily come from the institutional knowledge. So we’re really trying break that and be respectful of the knowledge that’s coming from within community.”
For Goeman, a Tonawanda Band of Senecas descendent, it’s not lost on her why something like language and other aspects of Haudenosaunee culture is dwindling. It was a tactical objective of Native boarding and residential schools once supported by U.S. and Canadian governments for a century and a half.
“Education has a hard history with American Indians -- like the Thomas Indian School," Goeman cited, which was an Indian boarding school managed by New York State and whose curriculum forced assimilation onto Native youth until its closure in 1957. "As September 30th approaches, which is Orange Shirt Day, we have to recognize the damage that boarding schools and reserve schools have caused our community. So education, there can be a kind of stressed relationship, but we're trying to repair that relationship. We're bringing in various people from these communities into the classroom, so you can learn from their voices.”
Orange Shirt Day is a Canadian federal holiday to reflect on the legacy of the residential school system and what it did to Native communities. There is no U.S. equivalent federal holiday, but the New York State Senate passed a resolution in 2022 to observe the day in concurrence as Every Child Matters Day.
The holiday has also seen support in other Native communities around the United States, as the Canadian residential school system and US boarding school system were created under a similar ethos. As General Richard Pratt (founder of the flagship American Indian boarding school in Carlisle, PA) put it, to "kill the Indian, and save the man."
In addition to the new Bachelor’s degree at U-B, SUNY has also announced a new minor program at SUNY Stony Brook.
